


Gourds

by heuradys



Category: due South
Genre: M/M, Pairing would spoil the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-09-20
Updated: 2003-09-28
Packaged: 2018-03-08 16:49:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3216362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heuradys/pseuds/heuradys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little Halloween story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written a million years ago for the dS flashfiction "key" challenge. Beta by Kalena and Raffe. My first Ray K story.

There was a smiling pumpkin on his door.

Ray blinked at the orange apparition and shrugged. In this building, it would likely disappear as mysteriously as it had appeared, and he had to hurry up and change so he wouldn't be late picking up his date at the Consulate. He unlocked his door and opened it, still staring into the eyes of the paper vegetable, grinning right back at it. "There ain't no way he's going to top my costume!" 

There was an upside-down, simpering, black kitten wearing a wizard's starry hat spiked onto his dartboard, a dart perfectly centered in its forehead, where its freakishly large eyes were focused. Whoa. Somebody hates wizard pussy, he thought bemusedly even as he froze, hand edging toward his gun, listening intently. 

Nothing. 

He sniffed the air.

Cinnamon, cloves, apples... Not the festering bag of trash he'd forgotten to take out that morning. He edged slowly into the kitchen. Cider. There was spiced cider simmering on his stove. Another damned pumpkin beamed idiotically at him from his refrigerator door. 

The kitchen was immaculate; his sink was even shiny. The antique cobweb by the light was gone! The other rooms were the same; all spotlessly clean, his clutter subtly shifted. The turtle was staring as confusedly as a turtle could at a miniature carved pumpkin in his tank. Bats warred with the pumpkins adorning the walls of his bedroom. 

Breaking and decorating? With this much cleaning? Only one suspect. 

"Where the fuck are you, Mountie?" He spun around on his heel, took a step and a header over the large pumpkin he'd not noticed beside the bed.

"Ow! Shit!" More startled than hurt, he lay on his side, eyeball to eyeball with yet another pumpkin that looked uncannily like Harding Welsh. He closed his eyes, unable to stop laughing.

The bathroom door opened a crack. "Ray? Ray, are you all right? I'm sorry about the jack o' lanterns, but I wanted them to be a surprise. I guess it was, although hardly in the manner I intended. You like the decorations? I hope I didn't get carried away, but the Inspector let me leave early and I thought I'd save you the trouble of coming to pick me up later, and I had most of the afternoon to kill, so I came here. Is that okay?"

"Yeah, yeah." He rolled over, still chuckling, levering himself up onto his knees. "Just warn me when you're going to put gourds where they don't belong!" 

"And, Ray? I'm sorry I wasn't ready in the kitchen to serve you a welcome home drink, but I have a few things to finish up in here. Your grout is truly dismal, Ray..."

"Fuck my grout," he growled under his breath. "You shouldn't be cleaning my grout." He sat on the edge of the bed, leaned down and started to untie his boots. "How did you get in here?" he asked more loudly, cutting off the rambling explanation, fighting with the knot in his laces.

"Ray?" 

"I know I didn't give you a --"

A pair of very very shiny, very very large, patent leather, spike-heeled pumps entering his field of vision cut off his train of thought and his mouth went dry. Fishnet stockings. 

Oooh boy.

Ray let his eyes track up the long, long legs. Up, up, up...

No way. No way was this his straitlaced Mountie. Nuh-uh. This was a candy corn induced hallucination. No freakin' way.

"Ray? You know you didn't... what?"

The stockings stopped just a fraction of an inch below an obscenely short and pristinely white ruffled petticoat. His palms started to sweat. Decades of his favorite, cliched porn-based fantasies flickered through his brain. Over the petticoat's layers, an even shorter black, satin skirt teased him from behind a microscopic, lace-trimmed white apron. There was a black and purple, ostrich feather duster dangling from one of his fantasy's large, shiny, black latex-gloved hands, which were planted on the figure's corseted waist.

"Didn't give you a..." He swallowed, letting his gaze slip a little higher, up over another pair of gourds that were certainly somewhere they didn't belong, over the velvet and lace choker disguising the Adam's apple, and onto the perfectly made-up face framed with an auburn, chin-length wig. "Key," he tried to say, but not a sound came out.

"A key, Ray?" The apparition tossed the duster onto the bed beside him, sinking to its knees and taking his booted foot onto its lap, fingers already busy with the knotted laces.

"Yeah," he cleared his throat. "A key. Key. Yeah. That's it. Key. A key. Keykey."

The elbow-length glove glistened as the large fingers slipped into the faux-cleavage, emerging to show a key between forefinger and thumb before tucking it away again. "I know you left it with Francesca in case of emergency, and that this didn't qualify as an emergency, and I hope you'll forgive me, but I'll..." The mischievous smile Ray could never resist lit his kneeling companion's face, the blue, kohl-rimmed eyes sparkling. "I'll make it up to you any way I can, sir."

Oooh. Naughty maid. Screw the party.

"Oh you will, will you? Any way, huh?" 

"I will cater to your every depraved whim," came the husky reply, and Ray Jr. tried to drill a hole through Ray's zipper.

He picked up the discarded duster, watching his partner's hands as they set his boot on the floor beside the Welshy pumpkin. "So, what am I going to call you tonight, huh? Renee?"

"That's what I was thinking originally, Ray - sir, since after all it is just a shift in intonation, but..." Turnbull's eyes met his, and his cheek dimpled as he grinned impishly again, fishing in his bra and dangling the key in front of Ray's face with a saucy wink. "Considering your reaction to my costume, perhaps 'Kiki' is better..."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More Kiki.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretty sure this challenge was 'movies.'

Wig askew, swinging his pumps in his left hand, Turnbull hummed as he padded carefully toward Canada, a trail of bedraggled ostrich feathers fluttering to the ground behind him. He was still fighting the shit-eating grin that kept taking over his face - a losing battle, but a giddy, giggly one. Ray is so wonderfully inventive and enthusiastic! Turnbull sighed in mingled bliss and regret. How could he have forgotten his uniform? Forgotten any clothes altogether? Well, yes, he'd been terribly flustered and distracted by the idea of surprising Ray, but he should have anticipated missing the party; he'd hoped, in fact, that they would. 

He fought down a flicker of guilt. He'd left a note, he chided himself, hadn't been crass and left Ray's without telling him at all.

Directly across from the consulate, he looked both ways carefully before crossing the street, feeling a frisson of delighted guilt for jaywalking. So naughty! But hardly bad, he thought, images of Ray and handcuffs and tickling and spanking making him grin delightedly again, since there wasn't another soul on the street and no traffic, either.

The white delivery van screeching around the corner was a complete surprise. He froze, nearly across, his cold, sore feet not up to running. But the van didn't slow, didn't stop or swerve, and he raised his arms in a futile attempt to protect himself, meeting the bloodshot, crazy eyes of the black-mohawked driver a split second before --

THUMP!

Brakes squealed - finally. A rain of feathers pattered to the ground around him as he groaned lowly.

"Help...?" he mouthed toward the sky, listening to the driver and passengers of the van arguing in a burst of loud profanity. He rolled painfully over, then tried crawling toward the curb. He thought hazily that the voice addressed as 'Billy, you stupid fuck! Get back in the fucking van!' might help him, and he stretched his hand imploringly toward it. He pulled back that reaching-out hand when it became clear that the Billy-voice was losing the fight with the other voice; the voice that had to be the driver's, the one called 'Joe, you fucking asshole! You hit this... guy'. The van sped away as he collapsed hard on the sidewalk directly under the limply fluttering Canadian flag. 

~~~

He looked around at his small bedroom in shock, sitting down abruptly on his narrow, specially ordered extra-long cot. Everything was covered with a disgusting layer of dust and all his favorite things were missing! Try as he might, he couldn't remember how he'd gotten inside the consulate, either. Dismayed and distracted, he pulled a hard, rectangular object from beneath his sore buttocks, glancing down at it - then staring.

Handbook for the Recently Deceased? 

Oh... "Oh dear!"


End file.
